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Seeing is Believing?

I’ve known since childhood that the things you see in the movies
aren’t real. The witch and the flying monkeys of “The Wizard of Oz” kept me
awake for a few nights, but my parents assured me that they were just actors
with makeup and they were “pretending” just as I pretended to be a princess. The
first movie that caused me to doubt them was “The Blob” (1958)- a terrifying science
fiction movie starring Steve McQueen and featuring a jello-like alien creature
that consumed everything in its path. I had nightmares for weeks. But
eventually, as all children do, I learned to separate fact from fiction.

Or did I? As it turns out, many of the things I have seen and
heard and read over the years have been elaborate manipulations, hoaxes, fakes,
scams, pranks, tricks, and lies. None of them were identified as such at the
time and I never guessed they were not real. I was reminded of that recently by
this slideshow of altered images: “Hoaxes, fakes, and doctored photos through
history.” (Be sure to see images 22, 34, and 37.)

The most disturbing doctored photos are the ones that appear
on the covers of women’s magazines. I’ve heard complaints before from stars
such as Jamie Lee Curtis about the airbrushing and “digital slimming” done by
professional photographers. Some photos are even created by placing the head of
one person on the body of another. We are accustomed to “body doubles” in
movies, but in a magazine it seems like a dirty trick, especially when it is perceived
as reality by young impressionable girls who think their body image could ever
match the perfect (fake) ones they see!

I spent years trying to cook the perfect turkey for
Thanksgiving, only to find out that most of the magazine pictures I was
referencing were fakes. The turkeys in the photos were perfectly plump and
browned evenly because they weren’t cooked- most were browned with a little hand torch. Some were even plastic! I learned
all about fake food used for photos while visiting a professional food
photographer’s studio in 1990.

Ansel Adams manipulated many of his landscape images in the dark
room in order to create the lights and shadows he saw in his imagination. Photographers
have always added or removed people, objects, and animals from photos. With digital cameras and amazing software it’s possible to
do almost anything with a photo. Unfortunately that makes all of us easy to
fool. And it makes me cynical about so many things that I see.

Seeing is believing…but only in person with your own two
eyes. Even then you have to be careful!